Secondary Menu (below header)

The CBC Waste-o-Meter (seen along the right column) uses an algorithm that calculates the ongoing amount spent on the CBC by taxpayers from January 1st of each year.

We’ve been doing this for years, and an unknown number of websites use our widget (seen at right) now. Get it yourself!

Our Waste-o-Meter algorithm starts with an annual amount of $1.2 BILLION per year of known taxpayer support, which represents direct annual “government” (taxpayer) funding of that government operation (which they pretend is a regular “corporation” — like a regular business — even in its phony name, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation).

We should really add an additional 200 to 600 MILLION dollars in in taxpayer funding to account for the “arts” and “entertainment” and “documentaries” and other individually taxpayer-subsidized programming that the state-owned, state-funded CBC then buys with our $1.2 BILLION of tax dollars. The CBC boasts of presenting lots of made-in-Canada programs, but using reasonable assumptions based on sober analysis and observation and anecdotal evidence, it seems nearly no such programing is created in Canada without itself getting Canadian taxpayer funding in the form of loans, grants, tax credits, or other such subsidies.

If you are a Canadian television or movie producer who has not received any government funding or tax breaks or loans or grants, etc., we’d love to hear from you.

We could also add the additional value of legal, regulatory, and other anti-competitive protections given to the CBC — it is simply incalculable, but would surely have to be measured in the many millions.

Beyond the direct federal funding (currently at least $1.2 billion), the $200 million (at the very least) which we really should all add to that does not represent the total cost to Canadians, by any means. There is also the incalculable cost to the state-owned CBC’s competitors in terms of their loss of advertising dollars. Also, the cost of competitive bids to secure programing such as NHL games and the Olympics, which the CBC bids up using taxpayer dollars, is impossible to estimate, but is surely mammoth in scale.

All of that notwithstanding, we stick with the $1.2 billion amount.

What kind of government competes against its own citizens this way — particularly in the forum of ideas, and politics, and the delivery of news, which informs citizens as to its voting preferences? Think about it. And make no mistake, that is what is happening here.

We feel state-owned and state-funded media should simply be banned in Canada, and that notion should be enshrined in our constitution. Canada is supposed to be a free country. The CBC and its “business model” sound more like something belonging in the old Soviet Union or in North Korea.